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Distractor Selection Ratios

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Thomas E. Love
Thomas E. Love*
Affiliation:
Department of Operations Research, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas E. Love, Department of Operations Research, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7235.
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Abstract

A latent variable representation for multiple-choice item and option characteristic curves is presented. Under standard assumptions of conditional independence of item responses and monotonicity of item characteristic curves, a criterion for distractors is proposed based on distractor selection ratios. A connection is made between the proposed criterion and the theory of individual choice behavior, providing new insight. The main results allow for the testing of the criterion from observable data without first specifying a parametric form for the characteristic curves. A series of examples apply the method.

Keywords

item response theorymultiple-choice itemslatent variable modelsindividual choice behaviorassociationcontingency tables
Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 51 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The author gratefully acknowledges Paul R. Rosenbaum for valuable conversations on the subject of this paper, as well as David Hildebrand and Abba Krieger for their comments and encouragement at a presentation on this subject which led to improvements in the paper. This work was supported in part by a grant from the Department of Statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, for which the author thanks Paul Shaman. Finally, he thanks three anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

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